Boyville has made itself known to all classes of citizens, and has attracted intelligent attention throughout the country. The newsboys have learned to work together harmoniously, and this is one of the valuable secrets of human society that all must learn in order to be successful and happy. In the auxiliary monthly meetings the newsboys conduct the business with more decorum and intelligence than the average political conventions. So much for the self-governing plan. The following interesting talk on “The Evils of Cigarette Smoking” was part of an address delivered at one of the Sunday afternoon meetings, and is well worth the time spent in reading: “Smoking cigarettes causes both insanity and the degeneracy that ends in crime. The cigarette slave is always enfeebled in body, in mind, or in moral sense, and generally in all three. Whatever be the cause—whether it is opium and other drugs mixed with tobacco, or oil created in the paper by burning, or the immediate absorption of the nicotine from the lungs by the blood, to be lodged in every nerve and brain-cell in the system—the fact remains beyond dispute that the cigarette is a deadly poison. [Illustration: PASTIME—THE BEGINNING.] “It not only deprives the blood of the proper quantity of oxygen and thus prevents its purification, but it also loads it with filth, so that the heart becomes clogged and the delicate convolutions of the brain, upon which the mind’s attitude toward intellectual concepts and moral principles depends, are paralyzed. Cigarette smoking also creates a perpetual irritation, like unquenchable thirst, in the nervous system. It sets up a continual discomfort, a kind of a gnawing in the nerves, which makes the victim eternally uneasy except while he is inhaling the poison into his lungs. The result of all this is, that he lives in a constant state of nervous excitement, which reacts upon his poisoned brain and makes him incapable of serious and consecutive thought. His body is weary all the time, except when it is being stimulated by the alcohol which cigarette slaves inevitably seek and find, and at last cannot do without. It is a fact that crime and cigarettes nearly always go together. Prison records show that criminals, almost without exception, are cigarette slaves. Such is the history of the cigarette slave, and while, if he is a natural man of good family history, education, intelligence and ample means, he may avoid crime, yet he is in eternal danger. Boys, newsboys, for your own interest and welfare, for the love you have for your parents, if you are cigarette smokers, stop it at once. If not—do not begin.” CHAPTER XXXIX. The question is often asked: “Do you want us to go out upon the streets and bring those ragged, dirty boys with us into our churches, and have them sit in the same pew with us?” No, indeed, no. Both you and the boys would be unhappy.